LoneDreamer wrote:After death realms? I would say that oblivion is better than rebirth or other such realms. But, I'm not completely sure about which one is true. I guess that's because I am a little bit religious.

Oblivion would be better than rebirth in a realm where you have everything forever. How many years in a world with everything would pass before you've done it all and are completely miserable? What does love mean when that person can be around you for not hundreds, not thousands, but infinite amount of years? The idea of Heaven has always seemed more like Hell to me.

Even Hell. How many years of torture and pain do you need before the ego completely dissociates from the mind and you simply become nothing.

I remember in a videogame I once played, Skyrim, there was this plane of existence where souls were banished for an eternity. They would be there so long that they'd become mad hollows and eventually just no longer have any recollection of what they were, what was important to them, where they were.

Summerlander wrote:How could Robert Monroe describe 'after death realms' when he was ALIVE when he wrote about his experiences? Come on ...

Isn't it obvious? All he needed to do was talk bullshit about "after death realms" and he has people saying his name all over the place. I'm sure it got him plenty of metaphysical hippy chicks too.

Yep! Nothing but a money-grabbing whore!

And now his pal Thomas Campbell has posthumously started a New Age cult based on the same lies ...

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

LoneDreamer wrote:After death realms? I would say that oblivion is better than rebirth or other such realms. But, I'm not completely sure about which one is true. I guess that's because I am a little bit religious.

Oblivion would be better than rebirth in a realm where you have everything forever. How many years in a world with everything would pass before you've done it all and are completely miserable? What does love mean when that person can be around you for not hundreds, not thousands, but infinite amount of years? The idea of Heaven has always seemed more like Hell to me.

Even Hell. How many years of torture and pain do you need before the ego completely dissociates from the mind and you simply become nothing.

I remember in a videogame I once played, Skyrim, there was this plane of existence where souls were banished for an eternity. They would be there so long that they'd become mad hollows and eventually just no longer have any recollection of what they were, what was important to them, where they were.

I would say if there is a heaven, it should be like a world of my own in which I am god. I can literally do anything. Experiment with life, play games and stuff. Occasionally, meet with other people in heaven and my family. And if getting bored go for a hibernation for 3 or 4 years/months. I would say that's not bad. Regarding god, I have read in some games,comics and some religious scriptures that collective thoughts of humans occasionally influence the world and maybe god too. Seems like a cool theory but can't completely believe since it's related to supernatural stuff.

If we happen to consciously return after death it'll be because the universe stumbled upon a physical configuration that defines your continued subjective existence---not because ghosts exist. I'm sorry but I'm a physicalist because we really don't have much choice empirically and epistemologically speaking. And there is no need to posit an intelligent Prime Mover that kickstarted everything much less one that had us in mind and wants us submissive.

We are products of the shoddy work of evolution hence why we continually try to make up for our shortcomings with better medicine and technology. The universe did not have us in mind when it naturally emerged from quantum fluctuations at a level of reality where the state of nothingness is highly unstable. There is no reason to be a theist, a deist or a pantheist. Atheism---the disbelief in God's existence often due to absence of evidence in a precarious world of cause-and-effect---is the only tenable position to take.

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

It's not even an opinion, it's the most reasonable, honest---and humble---position. If I have opinions about the phenomena that surrounds us, I make sure they are always well-informed. In this case, my stance is one of logical disbelief and acceptance of the way things are.

Only by accepting and seeing how it really works, can we ever hope to improve our way of life and prosper as a species. We have to do it! We must come together to make it work. And we'd do ourselves a favour by jettisoning the regnant religious meme, because, as we've seen throughout the ages, only stultifies human progress.

Let's stop brainwashing our children with bronze age myths and fairytales that were used in the Middle Ages---by allegedly divine royalty---to control the masses.

You know what's missing from this expository equation? Lucid dreaming. There is no reason to believe such conscious states of sleep authenticate a supernatural dimension. Lucid dreams can be neuroscientifically explained as 'software' illusions of the brain. LaBerge will tell you wakefulness is dreaming constrained by sensory input, and dreaming is perceiving largely without such constraints. So, conscious perception in your sleep is mostly based on previously retained cerebral information. Nothing in a dream will ever violate what's encrypted in your neural network, as it were. The dream is composed of information produced by a retentive process in your noddle---hence why tecniques like MILD rely on mnemonics.

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

Summerlander wrote:There is no reason to be a theist, a deist or a pantheist. Atheism---the disbelief in God's existence often due to absence of evidence in a precarious world of cause-and-effect---is the only tenable position to take.

I am not an atheist I am a bit agnostic and a nihilist. I will become atheist when all the religions are abolished. Not just one. But unfortunately most people aren't ready to. I don't know but I stumbled upon a nihilistic agnostic. He said that when religions are gone, morality will also perish slowly. Personally, I see morality as a set rules made by humans to keep society from going into chaos. But what do you think of the impact of atheism on morality? I'm not against atheism, I just want to know your views regarding morality.